The Complete Works. William Butler Yeats

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СКАЧАТЬ blessing light upon your ladyship;

      You will have saved the land.

      CATHLEEN.

      Make no delay.

      [He goes.

      [Enter SERVANT.]

      How did you thrive? Say quickly. You are pale.

      SERVANT.

      Their eyes burn like the eyes of birds of prey:

      I did not dare go near.

      CATHLEEN.

      God pity them!

      Bring all the old and ailing to this house,

      For I will have no sorrow of my own

      From this day onward.

      [The SERVANT goes out. Some of the musicians follow him, some linger in the doorway. The COUNTESS CATHLEEN kneels beside OONA.

      Can you tell me, mother,

      How I may mend the times, how staunch this wound

      That bleeds in the earth, how overturn the famine,

      How drive these demons to their darkness again?

      OONA.

      The demons hold our hearts between their hands,

      For the apple is in our blood, and though heart break

      There is no medicine but Michael’s trump.

      Till it has ended parting and old age

      And hail and rain and famine and foolish laughter;

      The dead are happy, the dust is in their ears.

ACT III.

       Table of Contents

      Hall of the COUNTESS CATHLEEN as before. SERVANT enters and goes towards the oratory door.

      SERVANT.

      Here is yet another would see your ladyship.

      CATHLEEN [within].

      Who calls me?

      SERVANT.

      There is a man would speak with you,

      And by his face he has some pressing news,

      Some moving tale.

      CATHLEEN [coming to chapel door].

      I cannot rest or pray,

      For all day long the messengers run hither

      On one another’s heels, and every message

      More evil than the one that had gone before.

      Who is the messenger?

      SERVANT.

      Aleel, the poet.

      CATHLEEN.

      There is no hour he is not welcome to me,

      Because I know of nothing but a harp-string

      That can remember happiness.

      [SERVANT goes out and ALEEL comes in.

      And now

      I grow forgetful of evil for awhile.

      ALEEL.

      I have come to bid you leave this castle, and fly

      Out of these woods.

      CATHLEEN.

      What evil is there here,

      That is not everywhere from this to the sea?

      ALEEL.

      They who have sent me walk invisible.

      CATHLEEN.

      Men say that the wise people of the raths

      Have given you wisdom.

      ALEEL.

      I lay in the dusk

      Upon the grassy margin of a lake

      Among the hills, where none of mortal creatures

      But the swan comes—my sleep became a fire.

      One walked in the fire with birds about his head.

      CATHLEEN.

      Ay, Aengus of the birds.

      ALEEL.

      He may be Aengus,

      But it may be he bears an angelical name.

      Lady, he bid me call you from these woods;

      He bids you bring Oona, your foster-mother,

      And some few serving-men and live in the hills

      Among the sounds of music and the light

      Of waters till the evil days are gone.

      [He kneels.]

      For here some terrible death is waiting you;

      Some unimaginable evil, some great darkness

      That fable has not dreamt of, nor sun nor moon

      Scattered.

      CATHLEEN.

      And he had birds about his head?

      ALEEL.

      Yes, yes, white birds. He bids you leave this house

      With some old trusty serving-man, who will feed

      All that are starving and shelter all that wander

      While there is food and house-room.

      CATHLEEN.

      He bids me go

      Where none of mortal creatures but the swan

      Dabbles, and there you would pluck the harp when the trees

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